Democrats' Dream of Universal Healthcare Achieved

NYT: The Supreme Court decision on Thursday to uphold most insurance subsidies in President Obama’s health care law is a validation of an effort to fulfill the promise of expanding health care that has been the aspiration of every Democratic president since Harry S. Truman.

By many measures, the answer is yes. More than seven million people are enrolled in the federal health insurance marketplaces. Without subsidies, many would be unable to buy insurance.

The subsidies also appear to have drawn substantial numbers of younger, healthier Americans into the new insurance markets, stabilizing premiums, even for people who pay the full cost themselves.

[If the Supreme Court were not to uphold the subsidies,] The effects would be felt around the country, but disproportionately in the South. More than three million people are receiving subsidies in four states that use the federal exchange: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. In Florida alone, 1.3 million people — more than 8 percent of the population under 65 — receive subsidies to buy insurance.

NYT: On Thursday morning, for the second time in three years, a majority of the Supreme Court rightly rejected a blatantly political effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act. The case challenging the law, King v. Burwell, was always an ideological farce dressed in a specious legal argument, and the court should never have taken review of it to begin with.

NYT: The decision allowing the federal subsidies virtually ensures that the Affordable Care Act will stay in place. For President Obama, it affirms the wisdom of engaging in a costly political fight that began almost as soon as he took office.